Things to consider when rebranding your company

I’ve spent two years actively building a brand that people trust. I engage with people in real time, I’ve created a product that people are proud to wear and one that they actively tell people about. Without a doubt, building trust and a great product have been the best things I could have done. The branding is less important when you’re only two years old.

Why?

Niche is good when you’re starting out. NicSocks.com started out as a premium, limited edition, online sock company. We did socks by subscription, manufactured and designed the socks ourselves and managed all of the distribution, marketing, pr, media, content creation. Everything. Typical startup approach to building a business.

I chose to keep it niche because that makes it manageable and quantifiable. I was trying to prove that people (men specifically) wanted to buy premium accessories online.

In the first year that theory was proved and I realised that there was a much broader opportunity for us in men’s accessories. So I began planning a rebrand.

I launched the company’s new identity (www.nicharry.com) last week which has been well received.

Here are a few things I re-learned, discovered and want to share:

Do It Right

If you’re going to rebrand, get a professional to do it. Unless you are a full time illustrator and brand expert you’re probably not qualified to create a new brand positioning for your company down to the actual logo design. Get help.

I called on Si Maclennan who I can’t recommend highly enough. In terms of value for money, efficiency and final result, he was incredible.

Thanks to David Perel at Obox I wrote an extremely detailed brief with examples of the aesthetic I was going for which helped to make the new logo and identity design a smooth process.

This is what we launched last week:

We wanted the brand to be able to withstand product shifts, retail moves and trends coming and going.

Overall the new identity, logo and product direction tie in perfectly together and have helped to move the company towards an expanded future.

Seek Advice

While considering the rebrand I decided to speak to key people who I thought could give me a decent perspective on what its like to rebrand a business and change direction.

The person who gave me the best advice was Luke from Superbalist (formerly Citymob).

Luke and his team spent a good few years building up their domain and brand as CityMob but realised that it wasn’t the right direction to take them forward. So they made the massive decision to rebrand.

When I met with Luke they were already past their rebranding and had successfully navigated through the hardships.

Luke gave me a single piece of advise that he told me he had received from a good friend of his:

No one gives a shit.

What fantastic advice. It caught me offguard. I left feeling a bit frustrated that Luke’s advice wasn’t more sage in it’s presentation. But there it was. No one gives a shit.

A week into our new identity and Luke’s advice could not have been more correct. People support your company, its product and the way you go about conducting yourself. Not your logo.

Sure, if Nike had to change names there would be one helluva fuss kicked up. But I’m not Nike and we’re only two. So if there’s a time to change, make it now.

Prepare

Launching a new identity is brutal. It’s easy to get into the everyday work mode of a business and go about your routines. It’s hard to stop everything, take the time out to handle the detail that needs to be done before you can go live with a new name, url, logo and colour palette.

Part of the Checklist:

• Domains
• Social handles: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+
• Design Social Assets: Headers, Icons, etc for FB, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+
• Email setup on new domain (this one almost broke me)
• Analytics Tracking
• Webmaster Tools

These things are just the start. As you go through the list and tick things off, more things become unticked and emerge that you’ll need to firefight.

Myself and Dave (from Obox) managed to get through the day without too much trouble having done this a few times before but there are numerous road blocks that can destroy your willingness to live.

Imagery Creates Brand

The major difference between the NicSocks website and the Nic Harry relaunch is the imagery that we used.

I called on a fashion photography expert to oversee this part of the new identity. Danillo Turilli did a fantastic job and I was there throughout the process to make sure that I was involved in every aspect of how the brand I had in my mind was translated into photographs.

This is another part of the process that I am glad I decided to pay top dollar for. A great logo and amazing photographs set our site apart from many of the others in our space.

Keep Calm

Do. Not. Panic.

Yes, something will go wrong. Yes, you will be gutted when it happens and need to lie down for a few minutes to get over it. But, you will carry on. You know why? Because if you don’t carry on, you’ll have a half-cocked new identity ready to fire. No one wants that.

Go all in or don’t bother to start.

Timing

I committed to a minimum of one full day of downtime to get the new site live and all the various aspects changed over to the new identity. I had also resigned myself to the fact that if it went on for another day, that’s OK too. Rather get it right than get it rushed.

Ultimately the relaunch took us about 30 solid hours of work (obviously not including the 6 month preparing our packaging, marketing, product expansion and doing consumer research).

The best advice I can give here is to not start the process at 10pm at night. You’ll be tired, there will be no-one around to help you or support you or for you to moan to.

Give yourself enough time to do a good job.

Deliver On The Details

There is every possibility that I have missed some details around our rebrand. However I did take care with some of the most important. One of the main details that I am proud of is how Nic Harry packages product.

It took months of work and preparation to get our new packaging design and the actual boxes right. In fact, we are still working out some of the kinks with the factory that produces the boxes from scratch.

We do everything bespoke and unique to our aesthetic and the unwrapping process is one of the most integral to our customer experience.

Don’t ignore the details. Someone always notices.

Enjoy It

Most important in this entire process is to enjoy it. Yes, it is brutal to rebrand, relaunch, rework, struggle and endure strife but underpinning all of it, I had fun.

If you don’t have fun and embrace the experience then all you’ll remember is the hellish time you had when you became something new.

You want to remember the entire experience fondly so that when you retell the story and create the narrative, it’s authentic and one that people can empathise with.

Nic Harry is a premium men’s accessories company.

We dress men from the ground up. We are focused on style. We are passionate about perfection in our accessories. We don’t sell anything that we don’t wear.

To shop our collection, visit NicHarry.com